Daniel Chew

Devin is a young architect navigating dating in New York. His online exchange with a writer, Nico, increasingly turns to fixation. As their virtual conversation goes deeper, this film by directors Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew invites us into a dynamic state between sexual tension and eagerness to feel desired.

Vivid interruptions of sound and images fragment the psychic landscape of a 38-year-old woman who becomes obsessed with the social media presence of the young woman who broke up her relationship. The latest entry in Chew and Durand’s ongoing examination of the embodied experience of our hybrid online-IRL existence, 38 mines contemporary life’s nuanced exchanges between longing and looking, voyeurism and the desire to be seen.

A teen girl’s experiences online and IRL blur together in this quietly inventive short by Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew. Through an ingenious use of subtitles, Durand and Chew seamlessly toggle between the banalities of young life and the fizzy, yearning commentary running beneath those same experiences when shared online.